The processing sector in Serbia has not managed to consolidate even after more than a quarter century since the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Food production in Serbia shares the fate of the entire production sector, as its integral part. Despite this fact, food production is more and more seen as the opportunity for increasing employment and the level of economic activity in Serbia. Especially after the introduction of EU sanctions by Russia, advocates of export of food products as the development opportunities for Serbia are growing louder. This made us pose the research question relating to whether economic growth in the area of food production has effects on employment level in Serbia? In searching for the answer to this question, we constructed a sample of the 20 largest food producers in Serbia and investigated the correlation between the level of economic activity in these companies and the number of their employees. We did the same for the 20 largest manufacturers in Slovenia and Croatia, and tested the hypothesis about the food production as the development opportunity.